Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) serves as the top Republican, or the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Inhofe is a proud Oklahoman and long-time resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
While our country is in the most threatened position in American history, Sen. Inhofe remains committed to rebuilding our military from the readiness crisis and addressing the growing threats from our enemies. As the Chairman for the Senate Armed Services Committee, he plays a key role in ensuring that our military has the best equipment, training and resources necessary to meet our nation’s diverse security challenges.
Our Declaration of Independence guarantees each American the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and I stand up for the unborn across America in fighting for the sanctity of human life. I am pro-life, and I am proud of it. I also advocate for adoption as an alternative to abortion.
To support adoption, I serve on the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and have enacted many proposals designed to encourage domestic and international adoptions for American families.
Our family knows the joys and blessings adoption can bring; my granddaughter, Marie, was adopted from Ethiopia when she was a baby. To support all families who want to grow their families through adoption, I have led initiatives to promote safe, efficient adoptions and authored legislation that encourages more families to take in children in need of foster care.
Throughout the years, I have nominated some wonderful Oklahoma families who received the Angels in Adoption ® award. Each year, members of Congress can nominate a deserving individual or family from their state to receive an Angels in Adoption ® award. You can read more about their stories here.
We have made so much progress over the last four years in our fight for life. As we begin this new chapter with an extremely anti-life administration, it is more important than ever to bring a voice to the unborn. Since Roe v. Wade, over 60 million babies have been deprived of the ability to experience the miracle of life.
To defend the right to life, I have been a leader on legislative efforts to end the practice of abortion, including the Life at Conception Act, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivor Protection Act and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. You can read more about these bills as well as a number of others I have cosponsored here. I also continue to work to defund Planned Parenthood by voting to overturn Obama-era regulations that tried to prevent states from withholding money from abortion providers.
Furthermore, while I work to end the abortion on demand culture, I’ve also pushed to specifically end abortions being sought because the unborn child has Down syndrome. As prenatal screenings increase in availability and accessibility, more and more women learn whether or not their baby has Down syndrome prior to the baby’s birth. Sadly, many of these lives are aborted following a diagnosis— over two-thirds of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted in the United States, and the population of individuals in Iceland with Down syndrome is being virtually eradicated altogether. My Protecting Individuals with Down Syndrome Act would enact a federal ban on the performance of an abortion with the knowledge that a pregnant woman is seeking an abortion, in whole or in part, on the basis of a belief that her unborn child has Down syndrome so we can better protect the rights of individuals with disabilities.